There are specific habits and practices people can learn to improve memory, according to a report released by Inc.
Bill Murphy Jr., author of The Free Book of Neuroscience: 13 Ways to Understand and Train Your Brain for Life, offers 8 surprising, time-tested tips for improving memory:
Memory – iStock
1. Better lighting
MSU researchers found that one type of lab rat “lost about 30 percent of capacity in the hippocampus, a brain region important for learning and memory, and performed poorly on a previously rehearsed spatial task.” because it was kept in low light conditions”.
Therefore, experts advise improving the lighting in the workplace and at home.
2. Puzzles and crossword puzzles
Writing in the journal NEJM Evidence, Davanger Devanand, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at Columbia University, and Murali Duriswamy, a professor of psychiatry and medicine at Duke University, said they studied 107 volunteers for 78 weeks. In short, they found that test subjects who were asked to do crossword puzzles regularly performed significantly better on memory loss (or lack thereof) than those who were asked to spend a similar amount of time playing video games.
3. Intermittent fasting
“That’s how you can grow new brain cells,” confirmed Dr. a King’s College London study of lab mice found that those who underwent an intermittent fasting regimen “improved long-term memory retention” compared to two other groups of mice that were fed this way as they are, or even with low-calorie diets.
4. Walk backwards
Researchers at the University of Roehampton in England conducted six experiments to determine whether simply walking backwards could lead to an improved ability to remember things using short-term memory. Indeed, the six experiments were successful, as “the results showed for the first time that guided movement-induced mental time travel into the past improved memory performance for different types of information.” about the experiments.
5. More fruits and vegetables
Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health have studied eating habits for more than two decades and found that participants who ate the most fruits and vegetables, especially those who ate the most dark orange vegetables, red vegetables, leafy greens, and berries , they had better memories later in life. .
6. Read for pleasure
Among the most recent studies, researchers at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois set out to determine if there are any cognitive habits that might go beyond solving puzzles and crossword puzzles in memory development. The researchers found that reading for pleasure, five days a week, about 90 minutes at a time, could “improve older people’s memory skills” better than jigsaw puzzles.
7. Get enough sleep
The results of a study conducted at the Institute of Chronobiology and Sleep at the University of Pennsylvania have revealed that humans suffer from a “deficit … vigilance and episodic memory” due to poor quality sleep.
The person also loses the ability to judge themselves as one of the negative effects of lack of sleep, advising that the only way to overcome these problems is to make sleep a priority.
8. Develop detailed hobbies
Findings from a Canadian study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, indicate that when researchers tried to determine whether people who took a deep interest in detail-oriented hobbies they could experience improvements in their memory over time.
In summary, the researchers found that people who engage in detailed hobbies, such as bird watching, and who tend to describe and store memories according to more detailed criteria, had better memory and cognitive abilities than the rest of the study participants.
Perhaps the explanation, said one researcher, is that “the more you know about your background, the better you are at learning and retaining new information by linking it to existing knowledge.”
